London traveller may look out by the brilliant gas-light and see perfectly sober

  papas and husbands alighting with their leather-bags after transacting their

  day's business at the county town. There is a resident rector, who appeals to

  the consciences of his hearers with all the immense advantages of a divine who

  keeps his own carriage; the church is enlarged by at least five hundred

  sittings; and the grammar-school, conducted on reformed principles, has its

  upper forms crowded with the genteel youth of Milby. The gentlemen there fall

  into no other excess at dinner-parties than the perfectly well-bred and virtuous

  excess of stupidity; and though the ladies are still said sometimes to take too

  much upon themselves, they are never known to take too much in any other way.

  The conversation is sometimes quite literary, for there is a flourishing

  book-club, and many of the younger ladies have carried their studies so far as

  to have forgotten a little German. In short, Milby is now a refined, moral, and

  enlightened town; no more resembling the Milby of former days than the huge,

  long-skirted, drab greatcoat that embarrassed the ankles of our grandfathers

  resembled the light paletot in which we tread jauntily through the muddiest

  streets, or than the bottle-nosed Britons, rejoicing over a tankard, in the old

  sign of the Two Travellers at Milby, resembled the severelooking gentlemen in

  straps and high collars whom a modern artist has represented as sipping the

  imaginary port of that well-known commercial house.

  But pray, reader, dismiss from your mind all the refined and fashionable ideas

  associated with this advanced state of things, and transport your imagination to

  a time when Milby had no gas-lights; when the mail drove up dusty or bespattered

  to the door of the Red Lion; when old Mr Crewe, the curate, in a brown Brutus

  wig, delivered inaudible sermons on a Sunday, and on a week-day imparted the

  education of a gentleman?that is to say, an arduous inacquaintance with Latin

  through the medium of the Eton grammar?to three pupils in the upper

  grammar-school.

  If you had passed through Milby on the coach at that time, you would have had no

  idea what important people lived there, and how very high a sense of rank was

  prevalent among them. It was a dingy-looking town, with a strong smell of

  tanning up one street, and a great shaking of handlooms up another; and even in

  that focus of aristocracy, Friar's Gate, the houses would not have seemed very

  imposing to the hasty and superficial glance of a passenger. You might still

  less have suspected that the figure in light fustian and large grey whiskers,

  leaning against the grocer's doorpost in High Street, was no less a person than

  Mr Lowme, one of the most aristocratic men in Milby, said to have been "brought

  up a gentleman," and to have had the gay habits accordant with that station,

  keeping his harriers and other expensive animals. He was now quite an elderly

  Lothario, reduced to the most economical sins; the prominent form of his gaiety

  being this of lounging at Mr Gruby's door, embarrassing the servant-maids who

  came for grocery, and talking scandal with the rare passers-by. Still, it was

  generally understood that Mr Lowme belonged to the highest circle of Milby

  society; his sons and daughters held up their heads very high indeed; and in

  spite of his condescending way of chatting and drinking with inferior people, he

  would himself have scorned any closer identification with them. It must be

  admitted that he was of some service to the town in this station at Mr Gruby's

  door, for he and Mr Landor's Newfoundland dog, who stretched himself and gaped

  on the opposite causeway, took something from the lifeless air that belonged to

  the High Street on every day except Saturday.

  Certainly, in spite of three assemblies and a charity ball in the winter, the

  occasional advent of a ventriloquist, or a company of itinerant players, some of

  whom were very highly thought of in London, and the annual three-days' fair in

  June, Milby might be considered dull by people of a hypochondriacal temperament,

  and perhaps this was one reason why many of the middle-aged inhabitants, male

  and female, often found it impossible to keep up their spirits without a very

  abundant supply of stimulants. It is true there were several substantial men who

  had a reputation for exceptional sobriety; so that Milby habits were really not

  as bad as possible; and no one is warranted in saying that old Mr Crewe's flock

  could not have been worse without any clergyman at all.

  The well-dressed parishioners generally were very regular church-goers, and to

  the younger ladies and gentlemen I am inclined to think that the Sunday morning

  service was the most exciting event of the week; for few places could present a

  more brilliant show of out-door toilettes than might be seen issuing from Milby

  church at one o'clock. There were the four tall Miss Pittmans, old Lawyer

  Pittman's daughters, with cannon curls surmounted by large hats, and long,

  drooping ostrich feathers of parrot green. There was Miss Phipps, with a crimson

  bonnet, very much tilted up behind, and a cockade of stiff feathers on the

  summit. There was Miss Landor, the belle of Milby, clad regally in purple and

  ermine, with a plume of feathers neither drooping nor erect, but maintaining a

  discreet medium. There were the three Miss Tomlinsons, who imitated Miss Landor,

  and also wore ermine and feathers; but their beauty was considered of a coarse

  order, and their square forms were quite unsuited to the round tippet which fell

  with such remarkable grace on Miss Landor's sloping shoulders. Looking at this

  plumed procession of ladies, you would have formed rather a high idea of Milby

  wealth; yet there was only one close carriage in the place, and that was old Mr

  Landor's, the banker, who, I think, never drove more than one horse. These

  sumptuously-attired ladies flashed past the vulgar eye in one-horse chaises, by

  no means of a superior build.

  The young gentlemen, too, were not without their little Sunday displays of

  costume, of a limited masculine kind. Mr Eustace Landor, being nearly of age,

  had recently acquired a diamond ring, together with the habit of rubbing his

  hand through his hair. He was tall and dark, and thus had an advantage which Mr

  Alfred Phipps, who, like his sister, was blond and stumpy, found it difficult to

  overtake, even by the severest attention to shirt studs, and the particular

  shade of brown that was best relieved by gilt buttons.

  The respect for the Sabbath, manifested in this attention to costume, was

  unhappily counterbalanced by considerable levity of behaviour during the prayers

  and sermon; for the young ladies and gentlemen of Milby were of a very satirical

  turn, Miss Landor especially being considered remarkably clever, and a terrible

  quiz; and the large congregation necessarily containing many persons inferior in

  dress and demeanour to the distinguished aristocratic minority, divine service

  offered irresistible temptations to joking, through the medium of telegraphic

  communications from the galleries to the aisles and back again. I remember
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  blushing very much, and thinking Miss Landor was laughing at me, because I was

  appearing in coat-tails for the first time, when I saw her look down slyly

  towards where I sat, and then turn with a titter to handsome Mr Bob Lowme, who

  had such beautiful whiskers meeting under his chin. But perhaps she was not

  thinking of me after all; for our pew was near the pulpit, and there was almost

  always something funny about old Mr Crewe. His brown wig was hardly ever put on

  quite right, and he had a way of raising his voice for three or four words, and

  lowering it again to a mumble, so that we could scarcely make out a word he

  said; though, as my mother observed, that was of no consequence in the prayers,

  since every one had a prayer-book; and as for the sermon, she continued with

  some causticity, we all of us heard more of it than we could remember when we

  got home.

  This youthful generation was not particularly literary. The young ladies who

  frizzed their hair, and gathered it all into large barricades in front of their

  heads, leaving their occipital region exposed without ornament, as if that,

  being a back view, was of no consequence, dreamed as little that their daughters

  would read a selection of German poetry, and be able to express an admiration

  for Schiller, as that they would turn all their hair the other way?that instead

  of threatening us with barricades in front, they would be most killing in

  retreat, "And, like the Parthian, wound us as they fly." Those charming

  well-frizzed ladies spoke French indeed with considerable facility, unshackled

  by any timid regard to idiom, and were in the habit of conducting conversations

  in that language in the presence of their less instructed elders; for according

  to the standard of those backward days, their education had been very lavish,

  such young ladies as Miss Landor, Miss Phipps, and the Miss Pittmans, having

  been "finished" at distant and expensive schools.

  Old lawyer Pittman had once been a very important person indeed, having in his

  earlier days managed the affairs of several gentlemen in those parts, who had

  subsequently been obliged to sell everything and leave the country, in which

  crisis Mr Pittman accommodatingly stepped in as a purchaser of their estates,

  taking on himself the risk and trouble of a more leisurely sale; which, however,

  happened to turn out very much to his advantage. Such opportunities occur quite

  unexpectedly in the way of business. But I think Mr Pittman must have been

  unlucky in his later speculations, for now, in his old age, he had not the

  reputation of being very rich; and though he rode slowly to his office in Milby

  every morning on an old white hackney, he had to resign the chief profits, as

  well as the active business of the firm, to his younger partner, Dempster. No

  one in Milby considered old Pittman a virtuous man, and the elder townspeople

  were not at all backward in narrating the least advantageous portions of his

  biography in a very round unvarnished manner. Yet I could never observe that

  they trusted him any the less, or liked him any the worse. Indeed, Pittman and

  Dempster were the popular lawyers of Milby and its neighbourhood, and Mr

  Benjamin Landor, whom no one had anything particular to say against, had a very

  meagre business in comparison. Hardly a landholder, hardly a farmer, hardly a

  parish within ten miles of Milby, whose affairs were not under the legal

  guardianship of Pittman and Dempster, and I think the clients were proud of

  their lawyers' unscrupulousness, as the patrons of the fancy are proud of their

  champion's "condition." It was not, to be sure, the thing for ordinary life, but

  it was the thing to bet on in a lawyer. Dempster's talent in "bringing through"

  a client was a very common topic of conversation with the farmers, over an

  incidental glass of grog at the Red Lion. "He's a long-headed feller, Dempster;

  why, it shows yer what a headpiece Dempster has, as he can drink a bottle o'

  brandy at a sittin', an' yit see further through a stone wall when he's done,

  than other folks 'll see through a glass winder." Even Mr Jerome, chief member

  of the congregation at Salem Chapel, an elderly man of very strict life, was one

  of Dempster's clients, and had quite an exceptional indulgence for his

  attorney's foibles, perhaps attributing them to the inevitable incompatibility

  of law and gospel.

  The standard of morality at Milby, you perceive, was not inconveniently high in

  those good old times, and an ingenuous vice or two was what every man expected

  of his neighbour. Old Mr Crewe, the curate, for example, was allowed to enjoy

  his avarice in comfort, without fear of sarcastic parish demagogues; and his

  flock liked him all the better for having scraped together a large fortune out

  of his school and curacy, and the proceeds of the three thousand pounds he had

  with his little deaf wife. It was clear he must be a learned man, for he had

  once had a large private school in connection with the grammar school, and had

  even numbered a young nobleman or two among his pupils. The fact that he read

  nothing at all now, and that his mind seemed absorbed in the commonest matters,

  was doubtless due to his having exhausted the resources of erudition earlier in

  life. It is true he was not spoken of in terms of high respect, and old Crewe's

  stingy housekeeping was a frequent subject of jesting; but this was a good

  old-fashioned characteristic in a parson who had been part of Milby life for

  half a century: it was like the dents and disfigurements in an old family

  tankard, which no one would like to part with for a smart new piece of plate

  fresh from Birmingham. The parishioners saw no reason at all why it should be

  desirable to venerate the parson or any one else: they were much more

  comfortable to look down a little on their fellow-creatures.

  Even the Dissent in Milby was then of a lax and indifferent kind. The doctrine

  of adult baptism, struggling under a heavy load of debt, had let off half its

  chapel area as a ribbon-shop; and Methodism was only to be detected, as you

  detect curious larv?, by diligent search in dirty corners. The Independents were

  the only Dissenters of whose existence Milby gentility was at all conscious, and

  it had a vague idea that the salient points of their creed were prayer without

  book, red brick, and hypocrisy. The Independent chapel, known as Salem, stood

  red and conspicuous in a broad street; more than one pewholder kept a

  brass-bound gig; and Mr Jerome, a retired cornfactor, and the most eminent

  member of the congregation, was one of the richest men in the parish. But in

  spite of this apparent prosperity, together with the usual amount of

  extemporaneous preaching mitigated by furtive notes, Salem belied its name, and

  was not always the abode of peace. For some reason or other, it was unfortunate

  in the choice of its ministers. The Rev. Mr Horner, elected with brilliant

  hopes, was discovered to be given to tippling and quarrelling with his wife; the

  Rev. Mr Rose's doctrine was a little too "high," verging on Antinomianism; the

  Rev. Mr Stickney's gift as a preacher was found to be less striking
on a more

  extended acquaintance; and the Rev. Mr Smith, a distinguished minister much

  sought after in the iron districts, with a talent for poetry, became

  objectionable from an inclination to exchange verses with the young ladies of

  his congregation. It was reasonably argued that such verses as Mr Smith's must

  take a long time for their composition, and the habit alluded to might intrench

  seriously on his pastoral duties. These reverend gentlemen, one and all, gave it

  as their opinion that the Salem church members were among the least enlightened

  of the Lord's people, and that Milby was a low place, where they would have

  found it a severe lot to have their lines fall for any long period; though, to

  see the smart and crowded congregation assembled on occasion of the annual

  charity sermon, any one might have supposed that the minister of Salem had

  rather a brilliant position in the ranks of Dissent. Several Church families

  used to attend on that occasion, for Milby, in those uninstructed days, had not

  yet heard that the schismatic ministers of Salem were obviously typified by

  Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and many Church people there were of opinion that

  Dissent might be a weakness, but, after all, had no great harm in it. These lax

  Episcopalians were, I believe, chiefly tradespeople, who held that, inasmuch as

  Congregationalism consumed candles, it ought to be supported, and accordingly

  made a point of presenting themselves at Salem for the afternoon charity sermon,

  with the expectation of being asked to hold a plate. Mr Pilgrim, too, was always

  there with his half-sovereign; for as there was no Dissenting doctor in Milby,

  Mr Pilgrim looked with great tolerance on all shades of religious opinion that

  did not include a belief in cures by miracle.

  On this point he had the concurrence of Mr Pratt, the only other medical man of

  the same standing in Milby. Otherwise, it was remarkable how strongly these two

  clever men were contrasted. Pratt was middle-sized, insinuating, and

  silveryvoiced; Pilgrim was tall, heavy, rough-mannered, and spluttering. Both

  were considered to have great powers of conversation, but Pratt's anecdotes were

  of the fine old crusted quality to be procured only of Joe Miller; Pilgrim's had

  the full fruity flavour of the most recent scandal. Pratt elegantly referred all

  diseases to debility, and with a proper contempt for symptomatic treatment, went

  to the root of the matter with port wine and bark; Pilgrim was persuaded that

  the evil principle in the human system was plethora, and he made war against it

  with cupping, blistering, and cathartics. They had both been long established in

  Milby, and as each had a sufficient practice, there was no very malignant

  rivalry between them; on the contrary, they had that sort of friendly contempt

  for each other which is always conducive to a good understanding between

  professional men; and when any new surgeon attempted, in an ill-advised hour, to

  settle himself in the town, it was strikingly demonstrated how slight and

  trivial are theoretic differences compared with the broad basis of common human

  feeling. There was the most perfect unanimity between Pratt and Pilgrim in the

  determination to drive away the obnoxious and too probably unqualified intruder

  as soon as possible. Whether the first wonderful cure he effected was on a

  patient of Pratt's or of Pilgrim's, one was as ready as the other to pull the

  interloper by the nose, and both alike directed their remarkable powers of

  conversation towards making the town too hot for him. But by their respective

  patients these two distinguished men were pitted against each other with great

  virulence. Mrs Lowme could not conceal her amazement that Mrs Phipps should

  trust her life in the hands of Pratt, who let her feed herself up to that

  degree, it was really shocking to hear how short her breath was; and Mrs Phipps